Chabot Does Care, At Least Once

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CityBeat stands corrected.

In this week’s Porkopolis column, which examines political fallout from the health care reform vote last month by U.S. Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-Price Hill), we said Steve Chabot — Driehaus’ predecessor and current opponent — hadn’t done much during his 14 years in Washington to improve access to affordable health care.

Specifically, we said he’d done “zero, zilch, nada.”

As one of our Republican friends (yes, we have some) reminded us today, Chabot co-sponsored the Child Health Care Affordability Act in April 2007, along with U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). The bill would have amended the IRS tax code to allow a tax credit for the medical expenses of a dependent, limited to $500 per person or $3,000 if the dependent had a terminal disease, cancer, disability or any other medical condition requiring hospitalization or other forms of specialized care.

The bill was referred to the House Ways and Means Committee, which never acted on it. The bill also was proposed in a previous session of Congress. At the end of each session, all proposed legislation that hasn’t been voted upon is automatically killed.

So that’s one small attempt. We’ll leave it up to readers to decide if that’s enough effort at improving health care for a 14-year period. (Not that most Congressional Democrats have done much better.)